July 17, 2000
Dear Everyone:
My arm has begun to hurt again, much the same as it
did a few years ago. I
noticed last weekend, when I went to pick something up and thought,
“Hey, that hurts.” Then I
realized that I’d had this thought before in just the past few weeks.
The last time this happened, I blamed it on
carrying too many heavy files to and from work because I was working
half the time in “Livermore” and half the time in
San Francisco.
I also admitted to myself that my purse was much too heavy.
Eventually, I was able to clear up the problem by becoming very
conscientiously left-handed as much as possible.
But things are different this time.
I’m not shuttling back and forth across the Bay.
And yes, my purse is too heavy, but it’s been too heavy for
years. What did now have in
common with back then that hasn’t changed in recent weeks or months?
(Oddly enough,
Word’s
grammar corrector has
no problem with the previous sentence.)
Then I remembered that way back when I was working
in San Francisco, around the time my arm was hurting, I was doing a lot
of designing reports on the computer for the SF people.
And lately, I’ve been designing a lot of reports for destruction
and for the new records management program.
So what does designing reports have to do with making your arm
hurt? Plenty.
Designing reports is considered “easy” with the new
windows-based programs because you can set up fields by using what’s
called “drag
and drop” technology.
This is also known as “click-and-drag”.
They both involve the same thing.
You use the mouse to point the cursor (the little arrow on the
screen) at what you want to move.
Then you hold down the mouse button and “drag” the cursor to
where you want to place the object, or to resize an existing object.
Click-and-dragging is perfectly OK if the most you
use it for is the nightly game of
Solitaire.
But if you do it for hours at a time, you are overusing a
tendon in your upper
forearm, just below the elbow.
Trust me when I say that this is a bad thing.
So, last Saturday, after spending a couple of hours
designing reports, I went across the freeway to the computer superstore
to look for a
mouse that I could use to click-and-drag without having to hold down
the button. I remembered
seeing mice in the past that had extra buttons that could be programmed
for this sort of thing.
At the superstore, I found myself in the mouse
aisle, talking to a genuine computer geek (complete with long hair) who
was also looking for a programmable button or four.
He recommended a
trackball that had four buttons that actually allowed for up to six
programmed features since you could hold down two buttons together to
perform a certain function.
For those of you who don’t know what a trackball
is, it’s sort of the opposite of a mouse.
The way a mouse works is with a little ball inside the mouse.
When you drag the mouse across the desk, the little ball rolls
inside where special sensors interpret the direction of the mouse and
transmit this information to the computer which then moves the cursor to
mimic what you’re doing with the mouse.
(If your mouse seems to stall and hang back, ask yourself, “When
was the last time I took that little ball out and cleaned the dust off
it?”)
With a trackball, the ball is much larger and it’s
on the outside, sitting in a special bowl with much the same kinds of
sensors as the mouse.
Instead of moving the mouse, you move the ball itself with the tips of
your fingers. This saves a
lot of wear and tear on those tendons, especially when you can program
one of the buttons to “drag this until I tell you to stop”.
Since this super trackball retails for about $60, I
decided to wait until I could talk with my boss on Monday.
And, since Company is so safety conscious, particularly where
Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) and Cumulative Trauma Disorders
(CTD) are concerned; and since that’s exactly what I’m hoping to head
off at the pass, he OK’d the purchase that morning.
So now I’m trying to learn how to use the
trackball. This involves
relearning certain habits (I’m forever trying to pick the thing up like
a regular mouse) and learning new ones like “press this button, then
this button to drag, then move the ball, then press this button to stop
dragging”. But we’re getting
there. An interesting
by-product is what happens when someone else is at your desk and tries
to use the “mouse”.
Enough already.
Movies… possibly the last one before we head up to
Oregon at the end of
next week. They’re called
X-Men,
even though half of them are female.
They are
mutants;
humans who have evolved into creatures with special powers, like
telepathy,
telekinesis and
making the wind blow really, really hard.
There are good guy mutants and bad guy mutants.
There are politicians who are campaigning to force all mutants to
“register”.
There are numerous allusions to
Nazi Germany and
the McCarthy era.
There are big knockdown drag-out fights.
This is all based on comic book characters.
Why bother to go at all (aside from air-conditioning and
popcorn)? The leader of the
bad guy mutants is played by
Ian McKellan.
The leader of the good guy mutants is played by
Patrick Stewart.
Shoot, “Jeannie” and I would pay money to watch these two guys
read the
phone directory to each other.
What more could you want?
Love, as always,
Pete
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